Love Story

  “Tell it to me again, Jen.”

  Patience was not one of Jenny’s virtues, and she refused to bolster my confidence by repeating the answers to all the stupid questions I had asked.

  “Just one more time, Jenny, please.”

  “I called him. I told him. He said okay. In English, because, as I told you and you don’t seem to want to believe, he doesn’t know a goddamn word of Italian except a few curses.”

  “But what does ‘okay’ mean?”

  “Are you implying that Harvard Law School has accepted a man who can’t even define ‘okay’?”

  “It’s not a legal term, Jenny.”

  She touched my arm. Thank God, I understood that. I still needed clarification, though. I had to know what I was in for.

  “‘Okay’ could also mean ‘I’ll suffer through it.’”

  She found the charity in her heart to repeat for the nth time the details of her conversation with her father. He was happy. He was. He had never expected, when he sent her off to Radcliffe, that she would return to Cranston to marry the boy next door (who by the way had asked her just before she left). He was at first incredulous that her intended’s name was really Oliver Barrett IV. He had then warned his daughter not to violate the Eleventh Commandment.

  “Which one is that?” I asked her.

  “Do not bullshit thy father,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “And that’s all, Oliver. Truly.”

  “He knows I’m poor?”

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t mind?”

  “At least you and he have something in common.”

  “But he’d be happier if I had a few bucks, right?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  I shut up for the rest of the ride.

  Jenny lived on a street called Hamilton Avenue, a long line of wooden houses with many children in front of them, and a few scraggly trees. Merely driving down it, looking for a parking space, I felt like in another country. To begin with, there were so many people. Besides the children playing, there were entire families sitting on their porches with apparently nothing better to do this Sunday afternoon than to watch me park my MG.

  Jenny leaped out first. She had incredible reflexes in Cranston, like some quick little grasshopper. There was all but an organized cheer when the porch watchers saw who my passenger was. No less than the great Cavilleri! When I heard all the greetings for her, I was almost ashamed to get out. I mean, I could not remotely for a moment pass for the hypothetical Olivero Barretto.

  “Hey, Jenny!” I heard one matronly type shout with great gusto.

  “Hey, Mrs. Capodilupo,” I heard Jenny bellow back. I climbed out of the car. I could feel the eyes on me.

  “Hey—who’s the boy?” shouted Mrs. Capodilupo. Not too subtle around here, are they?

  “He’s nothing!” Jenny called back. Which did wonders for my confidence.

  “Maybe,” shouted Mrs. Capodilupo in my direction, “but the girl he’s with is really something!”

  “He knows,” Jenny replied.

  She then turned to satisfy neighbors on the other side.

  “He knows,” she told a whole new group of her fans. She took my hand (I was a stranger in paradise), and led me up the stairs to 189A Hamilton Avenue.

  It was an awkward moment.

  I just stood there as Jenny said, “This is my father.” And Phil Cavilleri, a roughhewn (say 5′9″, 165-pound) Rhode Island type in his late forties, held out his hand.

  We shook and he had a strong grip.

  “How do you do, sir?”

  “Phil,” he corrected me, “I’m Phil.”

  “Phil, sir,” I replied, continuing to shake his hand.

  It was also a scary moment. Because then, just as he let go of my hand, Mr. Cavilleri turned to his daughter and gave this incredible shout:

  “Jennifer!”

  For a split second nothing happened. And then they were hugging. Tight. Very tight. Rocking to and fro. All Mr. Cavilleri could offer by way of further comment was the (now very soft) repetition of his daughter’s name: “Jennifer.” And all his graduating-Radcliffe-with-honors daughter could offer by way of reply was: “Phil.”

  I was definitely the odd man out.

  One thing about my couth upbringing helped me out that afternoon. I had always been lectured about not talking with my mouth full. Since Phil and his daughter kept conspiring to fill that orifice, I didn’t have to speak. I must have eaten a record quantity of Italian pastries. Afterward I discoursed at some length on which ones I had liked best (I ate no less than two of each kind, for fear of giving offense), to the delight of the two Cavilleris.

  “He’s okay,” said Phil Cavilleri to his daughter.

  What did that mean?

  I didn’t need to have “okay” defined; I merely wished to know what of my few and circumspect actions had earned for me that cherished epithet.

  Did I like the right cookies? Was my handshake strong enough? What?

  “I told you he was okay, Phil,” said Mr. Cavilleri’s daughter.

  “Well, okay,” said her father, “I still had to see for myself. Now I saw. Oliver?”

  He was now addressing me.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Phil.”

  “Yes, Phil, sir?”

  “You’re okay.”

  “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Really I do. And you know how I feel about your daughter, sir. And you, sir.”

  “Oliver,” Jenny interrupted, “will you stop babbling like a stupid goddamn preppie, and—”

  “Jennifer,” Mr. Cavilleri interrupted, “can you avoid the profanity? The sonovabitch is a guest!”

  At dinner (the pastries turned out to be merely a snack) Phil tried to have a serious talk with me about you-can-guess-what. For some crazy reason he thought he could effect a rapprochement between Olivers III and IV.

  “Let me speak to him on the phone, father to father,” he pleaded.

  “Please, Phil, it’s a waste of time.”

  “I can’t sit here and allow a parent to reject a child. I can’t.”

  “Yeah. But I reject him too, Phil.”

  “Don’t ever let me hear you talk like that,” he said, getting genuinely angry. “A father’s love is to be cherished and respected. It’s rare.”

  “Especially in my family,” I said.

  Jenny was getting up and down to serve, so she was not involved with most of this.

  “Get him on the phone,” Phil repeated. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “No, Phil. My father and I have installed a cold line.”

  “Aw, listen, Oliver, he’ll thaw. Believe me when I tell you he’ll thaw. When it’s time to go to church—”

  At this moment Jenny, who was handing out dessert plates, directed at her father a portentous monosyllable.

  “Phil…?”

  “Yeah, Jen?”

  “About the church bit…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh—kind of negative on it, Phil.”

  “Oh?” asked Mr. Cavilleri. Then, leaping instantly to the wrong conclusion, he turned apologetically toward me.

  “I—uh—didn’t mean necessarily Catholic Church, Oliver. I mean, as Jennifer has no doubt told you, we are of the Catholic faith. But, I mean, your church, Oliver. God will bless this union in any church, I swear.”

  I looked at Jenny, who had obviously failed to cover this crucial topic in her phone conversation.

  “Oliver,” she explained, “it was just too goddamn much to hit him with at once.”

  “What’s this?” asked the ever affable Mr. Cavilleri. “Hit me, hit me, children. I want to be hit with everything on your minds.”

  Why is it that at this precise moment my eyes hit upon the porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary on a shelf in the Cavilleris’ dining room?

  “It’s about the God-blessing bit, Phil,” said Jenny, averting her gaze from him.

  “Yeah, Jen, yeah?” asked Phil, fe
aring the worst.

  “Uh—kind of negative on it, Phil,” she said, now glancing at me for support—which my eyes tried to give her.

  “On God? On anybody’s God?”

  Jenny nodded yes.

  “May I explain, Phil?” I asked.

  “Please.”

  “We neither of us believe, Phil. And we won’t be hypocrites.”

  I think he took it because it came from me. He might maybe have hit Jenny. But now he was the odd man out, the foreigner. He couldn’t look at either of us.

  “That’s fine,” he said after a very long time. “Could I just be informed as to who performs the ceremony?”

  “We do,” I said.

  He looked at his daughter for verification. She nodded. My statement was correct.

  After another long silence, he again said, “That’s fine.” And then he inquired of me, inasmuch as I was planning a career in law, whether such a kind of marriage is—what’s the word?—legal?

  Jenny explained that the ceremony we had in mind would have the college Unitarian chaplain preside (“Ah, chaplain,” murmured Phil) while the man and woman address each other.

  “The bride speaks too?” he asked, almost as if this—of all things—might be the coup de grâce.

  “Philip,” said his daughter, “could you imagine any situation in which I would shut up?”

  “No, baby,” he replied, working up a tiny smile. “I guess you would have to talk.”

  As we drove back to Cambridge, I asked Jenny how she thought it all went.

  “Okay,” she said.

  10

  Mr. William F. Thompson, Associate Dean of the Harvard Law School, could not believe his ears.

  “Did I hear you right, Mr. Barrett?”

  “Yes, sir, Dean Thompson.”

  It had not been easy to say the first time. It was no easier repeating it.

  “I’ll need a scholarship for next year, sir.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s why I’m here, sir. You are in charge of Financial Aid, aren’t you, Dean Thompson?”

  “Yes, but it’s rather curious. Your father—”

  “He’s no longer involved, sir.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Dean Thompson took off his glasses and began to polish them with his tie.

  “He and I have had a sort of disagreement.”

  The Dean put his glasses back on, and looked at me with that kind of expressionless expression you have to be a dean to master.

  “This is very unfortunate, Mr. Barrett,” he said. For whom? I wanted to say. This guy was beginning to piss me off.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Very unfortunate. But that’s why I’ve come to you, sir. I’m getting married next month. We’ll both be working over the summer. Then Jenny—that’s my wife—will be teaching in a private school. That’s a living, but it’s still not tuition. Your tuition is pretty steep, Dean Thompson.”

  “Uh—yes,” he replied. But that’s all. Didn’t this guy get the drift of my conversation? Why in hell did he think I was there, anyway?

  “Dean Thompson, I would like a scholarship.” I said it straight out. A third time. “I have absolutely zilch in the bank, and I’m already accepted.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Mr. Thompson, hitting upon the technicality. “The final date for financial-aid applications is long overdue.”

  What would satisfy this bastard? The gory details, maybe? Was it scandal he wanted? What?

  “Dean Thompson, when I applied I didn’t know this would come up.”

  “That’s quite right, Mr. Barrett, and I must tell you that I really don’t think this office should enter into a family quarrel. A rather distressing one, at that.”

  “Okay, Dean,” I said, standing up. “I can see what you’re driving at. But I’m still not gonna kiss my father’s ass so you can get a Barrett Hall for the Law School.”

  As I turned to leave, I heard Dean Thompson mutter, “That’s unfair.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  11

  Jennifer was awarded her degree on Wednesday. All sorts of relatives from Cranston, Fall River—and even an aunt from Cleveland—flocked to Cambridge to attend the ceremony. By prior arrangement, I was not introduced as her fiancé, and Jenny wore no ring: this so that none would be offended (too soon) about missing our wedding.

  “Aunt Clara, this is my boyfriend Oliver,” Jenny would say, always adding, “He isn’t a college graduate.”

  There was plenty of rib poking, whispering and even overt speculation, but the relatives could pry no specific information from either of us—or from Phil, who I guess was happy to avoid a discussion of love among the atheists.

  On Thursday, I became Jenny’s academic equal, receiving my degree from Harvard—like her own, magna cum laude. Moreover, I was Class Marshal, and in this capacity got to lead the graduating seniors to their seats. This meant walking ahead of even the summas, the super-superbrains. I was almost moved to tell these types that my presence as their leader decisively proved my theory that an hour in Dillon Field House is worth two in Widener Library. But I refrained. Let the joy be universal.

  I have no idea whether Oliver Barrett III was present. More than seventeen thousand people jam into Harvard Yard on Commencement morning, and I certainly was not scanning the rows with binoculars. Obviously, I had used my allotted parent tickets for Phil and Jenny. Of course, as an alumnus, Old Stonyface could enter and sit with the Class of ’26. But then why should he want to? I mean, weren’t the banks open?

  The wedding was that Sunday. Our reason for excluding Jenny’s relatives was out of genuine concern that our omission of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost would make the occasion far too trying for unlapsed Catholics. It was in Phillips Brooks House, an old building in the north of Harvard Yard. Timothy Blauvelt, the college Unitarian chaplain, presided. Naturally, Ray Stratton was there, and I also invited Jeremy Nahum, a good friend from the Exeter days, who had taken Amherst over Harvard. Jenny asked a girl friend from Briggs Hall and—maybe for sentimental reasons—her tall, gawky colleague at the reserve book desk. And of course Phil.

  I put Ray Stratton in charge of Phil. I mean, just to keep him as loose as possible. Not that Stratton was all that calm! The pair of them stood there, looking tremendously uncomfortable, each silently reinforcing the other’s preconceived notion that this “do-it-yourself wedding” (as Phil referred to it) was going to be (as Stratton kept predicting) “an incredible horror show.” Just because Jenny and I were going to address a few words directly to one another! We had actually seen it done earlier that spring when one of Jenny’s musical friends, Marya Randall, married a design student named Eric Levenson. It was a very beautiful thing, and really sold us on the idea.

  “Are you two ready?” asked Mr. Blauvelt.

  “Yes,” I said for both of us.

  “Friends,” said Mr. Blauvelt to the others, “we are here to witness the union of two lives in marriage. Let us listen to the words they have chosen to read on this sacred occasion.”

  The bride first. Jenny stood facing me and recited the poem she had selected. It was very moving, perhaps especially to me, because it was a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett:

  When our two souls stand up erect and strong,

  Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

  Until the lengthening wings break into fire…

  From the corner of my eye I saw Phil Cavilleri, pale, slack-jawed, eyes wide with amazement and adoration combined. We listened to Jenny finish the sonnet, which was in its way a kind of prayer for

  A place to stand and love in for a day,

  With darkness and the death hour rounding it.

  Then it was my turn. It had been hard finding a piece of poetry I could read without blushing. I mean, I couldn’t stand there and recite lace-doily phrases. I couldn’t. But a section of Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road, though kind of brief, said it all for me:

  …I give you my hand!

  I g
ive you my love more precious than money,

  I give you myself before preaching or law;

  Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

  Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

  I finished, and there was a wonderful hush in the room. Then Ray Stratton handed me the ring, and Jenny and I—ourselves—recited the marriage vows, taking each other, from that day forward, to love and cherish, till death do us part.

  By the authority vested in him by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Mr. Timothy Blauvelt pronounced us man and wife.

  Upon reflection, our “post-game party” (as Stratton referred to it) was pretentiously unpretentious. Jenny and I had absolutely rejected the champagne route, and since there were so few of us we could all fit into one booth, we went to drink beer at Cronin’s. As I recall, Jim Cronin himself set us up with a round, as a tribute to “the greatest Harvard hockey player since the Cleary brothers.”

  “Like hell,” argued Phil Cavilleri, pounding his fist on the table. “He’s better than all the Clearys put together.” Philip’s meaning, I believe (he had never seen a Harvard hockey game), was that however well Bobby or Billy Cleary might have skated, neither got to marry his lovely daughter. I mean, we were all smashed, and it was just an excuse for getting more so.

  I let Phil pick up the tab, a decision which later evoked one of Jenny’s rare compliments about my intuition (“You’ll be a human being yet, Preppie”). It got a little hairy at the end when we drove him to the bus, however. I mean, the wet-eyes bit. His, Jenny’s, maybe mine too; I don’t remember anything except that the moment was liquid.

  Anyway, after all sorts of blessings, he got onto the bus and we waited and waved until it drove out of sight. It was then that the awesome truth started to get to me.